


Puppy Fat

by ear_hats



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Kidlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 10:04:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ear_hats/pseuds/ear_hats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘How’s the diet?’<br/>‘Fine.’</p><p>For a prompt over at the kink meme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Puppy Fat

‘Mummy . . .?’ Aged eight, Sherlock’s voice was that of a young soprano. From across the table, his mother quirked a questioning eyebrow. His father looked up from his newspaper and met Mycroft’s pale eyes with a raise of his own thick eyebrows.

‘What’s for pudding?’ Mycroft said, finishing Sherlock’s sentence and causing the younger to flush a deeper red.

‘Sherlock, dear,’ His mother said, tact wrapped around the _dear_ , ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’

 

Sherlock mouth curled downwards, emphasising what would soon be premature jowls. He’s not _obese_ , he knew he wasn’t obese because he measured his weight on the large scales in his mother’s en suite when she wasn’t looking and then used the chart in one of his father’s books of medicine. But he was fat. His stomach bulged and Mycroft said that soon he’d have _breasts_ like a girl. It’s just that he liked pudding. And he was never full.

 

Sherlock shrugged and Mycroft smirked. There was a rustle as the man at the head of the table disappeared behind his broadsheet.

‘I’ve been thinking, Mummy,’ Mycroft said, imperiousness leaking like sweat. ‘Sherlock should really be put on a diet. It’s unhealthy for him to be carrying around all that extra weight with him wherever he goes. And frankly, he’s an embarrassment to the family. He’s known as the Fat Holmes at school!”

‘Only because you called me fat in one of your debates, Mycroft!’ Sherlock meant to shout but the sound was muffled by the potato in his mouth.

‘Don’t raise your voice to your brother.’ Mummy said.

‘But he did say it.’

‘Sherlock-’

‘Besides,’ Mycroft continued, ‘Think of that little heart, wrapped up in layers of fat. He’s not the most active child either, is he?’

‘I am! I always play outside on sunny days!’

‘Yes, but you don’t play _sport_ , Sherlock. And playing outside obviously isn’t helping you much. I reckon you weigh about the same as I do and I’m much taller.’

‘Sport is for stupid people.’ Sherlock said and glanced up at his mother, expecting to be admonished, but she had retreated into her head. ‘Mummy, I don’t want to go on a diet.’

 

After dinner – after pudding – Sherlock’s mother took him into the drawing room and sat next to him on one of the sofas.

‘I don’t want to go on a diet, Mummy.’ Sherlock told her again and she dropped a hand into his curls. For a moment Sherlock imagined her pale hand on one of his legs, a tiny Island surrounded by a sea of blue fabric. Hot tears began to sting at his eyes. His mother let out a clicking sound but pulled him close to her. ‘I don’t want to be fat. I don’t want to be Fat Holmes.’

 

* * *

Mrs Holmes was well aware of her sons’ tendency to compete with one another. When Sherlock made it clear he wanted to be thin, she understood that what he really wanted was to be _thinner than Mycroft_ , just like he wanted to read their father’s new books before Mycroft did and insisted on sitting in the front whenever they drove anywhere. Left to his own devices, she knew, her youngest boy would either give up completely or go all out. And she wasn’t about to add an eating disorder to Sherlock’s list of issues.

 

Sherlock no longer had pudding. Sherlock ate all his vegetables, though his father did once have to spend ten minutes coaxing him into the first bite of a piece of courgette. Occasionally, when Sherlock and his Father would read together, the older man would let his son have a chocolate from his study – Mummy Holmes pretended not to notice and Mycroft was never to know. Sherlock got kicked out of the football club, the lacrosse club and

( _it was an accident, I promise_ )

made the captain of the u10s cricket team bleed.

 

‘But running is _dull_. Anyone can run.’ Sherlock, now aged nine and having only lost a small amount of roundness to his face and body, protested to his parents.

‘What about rugby?’

‘Oh, no. I don’t do team sports.’

His parents hummed. Four years of reports stating: DOES NOT PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS could have told them that.

‘What about boxing?’ Sherlock’s father suggested, fingers steepled underneath his chin. ‘What? He’s not going to get hurt boxing with me, is he? Besides, it might be useful for him when those deductions of his get him into a tight spot.’

Mrs Holmes made to protest but Sherlock seemed transfixed. It might work.

‘Please.’ He said, ‘Please teach me how to box.’ Sherlock was thinking of the captain of the U10s cricket team but there was no need for his father to know that. Unfortunately, his mother was sharp.

‘He will teach you-’

‘Yes!’

‘-But only if you run to the end of the drive and collect the post every morning. I’ll be watching.’

Sherlock frowned as his father laughed and said something about the reasons he got married.

 

It worked.

Sherlock boxed and ran and was forbidden from pudding and sweets and grew two or three feet. By the time Mycroft was leaving for university he was whipcord thin, and rather smug about it.

 

***

‘Never mind your usual trivia. This is of national importance.’

Sherlock looks his brother over. A cleverly cut suit, no doubt, but obviously disguising a recent weight gain. Sherlock had hated every second of running to and from the great gate at the end of their long drive, hated Mycroft’s smirk when he’d arrive sweating with the day’s letters. He hated how Mycroft could buy sweets on his way home and ice cream after ice cream during the summer months. But oh, how those years at university and sitting behind grand desks _softened_ his brother.

‘How’s the diet?’

‘Fine.’

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt (http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/21766.html?thread=128621318#t128621318). Thank you to amazing _athreebatchproblem_ for the betaing and the necessary reassuring that it was alright. I've been almost a year out of writing, thank you very much for reading and go easy on me please!


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